Rainbow Islands repair log #1

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Mar 052011
 

Got hold of a very poorly Rainbow Islands Extra board.
This board had some repair work done previously. There are a few burned out tracks and some dodgy looking wire links.

On power up it just showed a black screen, time to break out the Fluke 9010a.
The Fluke showed I had active interrupt lines. The 68000 CPU has 3 interrupts, IPL0, IPL1 and IPL2. IPL1 and 2 are tied to +5v (they are active low therefore unused here). IPL2 was stuck low.
I traced the line to a nearby 74ALS74 chip and then back to a 74LS273 (IC32). Regardless what the inputs were doing, the outputs were all stuck low. I replaced this and tested, still a blank screen. I check the 74ALS74 again and although all the inputs were now present and correct, its output to IPL2 was still stuck low. I piggybacked a new IC onto it and the game came to life. Replaced the IC.

Now the game booted up I could see that the colours of the character sprites were wrong, mainly black.

This caused me a lot of headache as the colours came good when I put the logic probe on different pins of different IC’s. I determined which IC was partially responsible for sprite colours by interrupting lines on various logic chips. I found that if I toggled pin 9 of IC35 (74LS157) the colours came good more regular. I removed this chip and tested it in my logic tester, it passed but if I put it on a loop it would intermittently fail. Replaced this and the colours were now back to normal.

There is also a problem when the sprites are facing left where it shows a broken character but still facing right. The pictures below shows the broken up boss sprite and broken rainbows when fired to the left.

This ended up being a short on pin 15 @ IC38 (74LS153). This pin was shorted very slightly to an exposed track running next to it. Removing this short fixed the graphics completely and the game is now 100%.
Very pleased.

Street Fighter Zero 2 repair log #1

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Mar 022011
 

Got this for repair today. Was under the impression it had suicided but this had jailbars on all screens starting from the Q sound screen.


On opening the case it was obvious what the cause may be.
One of the gfx maskroms was only half fitted.

Refitting the Rom fixed the problem.

Double Dragon repair log #3

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Feb 282011
 

Bought this a little while back as spares or repair. The fault was it had no sound but due to my scope packing in I never got around to fixing it until now.
The board is in outstanding condition and very clean.
I pulled out the schematics for this board that I had stashed away and began working my way backwards from the amp.
I found the analog output from the YM3012 was dead, replacing this chip brought back the music but some of the sound effects were still missing, namely the attack sounds. I recreated the fault using MAME by corrupting the ADPCM ROM 21j-6. From here I could trace the fault from the ROM right through to the amp.
I traced the fault to IC80, M5205 (ADPCM Speech Synthesis LSI). I could see the data going into it but pin 10 (output) was silent. Replacing this brought back the effects and completed the repair.

CPS2 volume fix

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Feb 122011
 

I have been looking for a fault on a CPS2 A board today. There was no volume coming out to the JAMMA connector but there was from the line out connectors (Stereo Q sound).
I couldn’t really find anything wrong as I had proved the on board amp was working.

I entered the test menu and it reported the volume was up full so I started to turn it down, when I got half way down the volume bar disappeared and the volume reported being set at 0. When I started to turn the volume up again the sound was back and it works perfectly.

Not sure what this was all about but its certainly something to keep in mind before I start poking around with a similar fault again.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Turtles in Time repair log #1

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Feb 012011
 

Got this TMNT2 board today cheap because it had a fault of slight graphics corruption.
The intro sequence was a bit of a mess and was very responsive moved.

I ran the built in MASKROM tests and 3K and 3L came us a BAD.

As one of the ROMs was socketed I removed it tried to dump it, I got a positive match from ROMIdent. As a little test I powered the board up without the ROM in and ran the test again, this time 3K showed up as BAD (it was removed) but 3L showed as GOOD.
I then corrupted the same ROM file in MAME and ran the MAME version, I had managed to reproduce my fault.

After much probing and head scratching I found that the enable line of ROM 3K must have a break in it under the solder mask of the PCB and was quite intermittent. This line is “active low” and when it goes open circuit (or dead) the chip enables and corrupts the data being sent as both 3K and 3L are sending their data together.
I traced the line back to its source which was pin 8 of a 74ALS04 at location 18F. I have ran a link from here to pin 12 of the ROM and the board now plays perfectly and passes all tests.